Many researchers and research institutions are moving to publishing original research and data as well as study/reference materials online. As a result, Internet search engines may be used to access a broad variety of original research. Because the Internet contains vast amounts of information that may be searched quickly and efficiently, researchers and academics are using the Internet more and more to conduct their research.
Researchers also can electronically publish and store research documents in a managed document repository, or a managed document research domain. Special tools have been applied to the contents of the research documents to categorize and sort the research based on their particular topic. Specifically, text analytics exist that find patterns in, interpret, assign meaning to or give structure to the document contents. One such tool is the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) framework available from International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, which provides a common framework for processing unstructured information to extract meaning and create structured data from the unstructured information.
Researchers seeking to publish new research results or draft new research papers often face the problem of comparing their research with existing publications or the general scientific consensus. For example, researchers may want to know whether their statements are far outside the established consensus. Typically, a researcher must provide comprehensive support for unconventional or strong assertions in their research, and provide less support for generally accepted statements. As such, given the overwhelming volume of new research published to the Internet, it can be difficult for a researcher to compare their paper to the other similar research or to the pool of general knowledge in a particular topic.